"NTLDR is missing" during bootup

I just installed Win7 and everything seems fine so far.

The issue came when I reboot the machine where it stopped with the error "NTLDR is missing".
Strange is it can boot up just fine if I put the Win7 installation DVD in the optical drive, even if the boot up was set to HDD as first in BIOS. Without the dvd in the drive, the boot up will stop again with "NTLDR is missing".

Tried the Startup Repair and some others but to no avail.
I don't mind doing a reformat, but not really sure if a reformat will fix the problem.

Any idea guys?

NTLDR is the old Windows 2000/XP loader.

In the system BIOS, make sure you've selected the correct hard disk as the first boot device. The hard disk that has Windows 7 on it.

By the way, you can also try EasyBCD to restore the bootloader.

Or boot from the DVD hit Shift + F10 and use this guide:
How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows Vista/7

sup3rsprt said:

NTLDR is the old Windows 2000/XP loader.

In the system BIOS, make sure you've selected the correct hard disk as the first boot device. The hard disk that has Windows 7 on it.

By the way, you can also try EasyBCD to restore the bootloader.

Or boot from the DVD hit Shift + F10 and use this guide:
How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows Vista/7

While this post is 921 days old, its new to me. Fortunately, your observation was correct. For some reason, my Gateway (came natively with Win7HP x64) PC's BIOS has swapped the boot drive (one of 3 HD's in my system) to another drive.

While I got my PC on a UPS, we had a few quick power glitch's within a few minutes of each other. Whether or not this had any thing to do with this, who knows.

Fortunately, by trusty old XP machine came to the rescue to read your message. Whew!

Another disturbing event occurred in that I tried to boot from my Win7 recover disks (DVD's), but I kept getting an "Instruction at 0x100035d6 referencing memory at 0xfffffffd cannot be read" for NAPP7.exe. I thought it was something to do with RAM, but I swapped out each of the 4 sticks, and that didn't change.

On top of that, adding insult to injury, Gateway (like so many others) doesn't provide a Windows 7 OS disk (of any kind). Short of paying twice for Win7, are there other alternatives, especially now that I have the system back up?

I read someone mention a "Win7.iso"?

Thanks,
Bill

Take a look at this excellent tutorial: Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

seavixen32 said:

Take a look at this excellent tutorial: Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

Excellent tip. Thanks!

You're very welcome.

The forum has a comprehensive tutorial listing that helps to solve most problems.